By using the term “Tarantism” or “Tarantulism”, we refer to a typical phenomenon located in the south-east of Italy, expecially in Salento. In this custom, sound is the only remedy capable to heal the bite of a spider called “Tarantula”.
According to popular believings the venomous powers of the spider caused vertigos, nausea and abdominal aches that occurred a few hours after the bite. So, the bite’s victims – called “tarantulated” – were reduced to a catathonic condition.
The only remedy for these suffering was the domiciliary sound therapy.
Victim’s relatives engaged some musicians – therapeutists in order to provide healing to the “tarantulated”.
Therapy was held inside the house or in courtyards, in a space prepared specifically for the ill person, adorned with coloured ribbons, basins full of water, aromatic herbs, mirrors and/or swords.
All these preparatives are similar to the “setting” concept of music-therapy, and lasted for entire days until the victim was completely healed, and this occurred always.
The main instrument of this custom was the frame-drum with rattles (better known as tambourine), accompanied by various melodic instruments such as flute, panpipes, guitar and violin.
This custom was so deep-rooted in Puglia’s and Salento’s culture (but we find traces of its presence in other regions of south Italy, in Abruzzo, and expecially in Sardegna where the custom had the name of “Argia”) that Catholic Church, unable to defeat it, had to allow the custom, entrusting St. Paolo – the saint of mystical ecstasy – as its patron. The Catholic Church also requested to people healed from these sufferings a pilgrimage to St. Paolo’s chapel in Galatina in order to pay thanks to the Saint (only author of the healing).
This resulted in the shifting of focus from the therapeutical effect of sound to miracle, but it also allowed this custom to survive till these days.
The originality and peculiarity of this phenomenon attracted philosophers, ethnologists, anthropologists and doctors; each one of them tried to go deep into the argument, and their attempt to give logic and rational explanations oriented the researches towards every possible connection of cause and effect, directing the attention to the real poisonous ness of the spider, to mental disorder, to socio-cultural ways of Puglia, to the real capacities of music, to sexual needs, to hysteria, and so on, without obtaining clear answers. Even when someone believed to have found them, he was soon contradicted by other contrasting proves. And yet the validity of the practice, leading quite always to recovery, was acknowledged in every research.
Various studies and researches about Tarantism demonstrated that Tarantula wasn’t related with illness, as its venom couldn’t cause that symptomatology related to mood illness as anxiety and depression, bounded to the relational sphere of subject: precluded eros, personal unsatisfactions, working stress, difficulties with social integration, and so on.
In my opinion all the researches and studies on tarantism did not succeed in giving sure answers because the argument has always been considered in its single parts – ill, spider, poison, therapy, hysteria, and so on – and not as a true community – patient, relatives, familiars and music players – aiming at well being; in my opinion the fact that this result was always achieved is the secret of the longevity of tarantism: the resolution of the case. Considering this aspect, Tarantism has to be promoted as a natural philosophy of life, purged by psychopathological and etiological prejudices that don’t give enough merit to the therapical event through sound, rhythm and dance, which is the purpose of modern music therapy.
A scholar who studied tarantism as a whole, without any prejudice, giving a very interesting interpretation of it, from the point of view of music therapy, was the ethnologist Ernesto De Martino in his masterpiece entitled “ Land of Remorse”. After a series of inquiries, he defines the phenomenon as follows “….Tarantism was first observed in the temporary ethnographic abstraction …at this stage the selected hermeneutic perspective of tarantism was verified as an institute and not as a disease. It was proved that the connection with forms of latrodectismo was occasional, and that the phenomenon could not be identified as psychic disorder. At the same time a well defined symbolic, culturally conditioned autonomy of the phenomenon was revealed, that is its mythical and ritual horizon of revival and reintegration in crucial moments of man’s life, particularly during the crisis of puberty with the conflicts and the precluded eros of the adolescent ”.
The mythical and ritual horizon of reintegration foreseen by De Martino is nothing but an evident trace of the ancient alliance between music and medicine that the ancient citharists-doctors of Puglia inherited from Pythagorean culture.
This Pythagorean message about healing music was so strong in Puglia that this therapeutical practice was granted in Tarentum even to those who couldn’t afford the treatment charges, just as told by Kirker in the XVII century “as a matter of fact the players of Tarentum … used to heal by music even in their capacity as public officers (that is salaried workers) to help the poors and relieve them from expenses.” (Musurgia)
So Tarantism would have its origins in the Pythagorean cuture which gave great importance to music as the life giving element of human being, and even as the regulator of the cosmos in the idea of Love – Soul – Harmony.
“ The Pythagoreans not only theorized the healing effectiveness of music, but were catharsis agents too. Pythagoras himself put into practice healing music and so did Archita Aristosseno and Clinia from Tarentum. People who were suffering from sciatica used to go to Aristosseno’s…..he was able to heal the excitement caused by wine too. As concerns the moral sphere, he thought that the aulos (ancient double flute) and the lyre were particularly efficacious in moderating loose morals and safeguarding the good government of the town. Then, in Pythagoreanism, the cathartic use of music concerned the pathos sphere in its threefold meaning, the psychic, the somatic and the moral one”. ( E. De Martino – La Terra del Rimorso)
According to the school of Ontosophia of Dr. Palmirotta this hypothesis gains a meaning of even more importance as there are – in the therapeutical practice leaded through art, music and philosophy (considered as mother of every science and art form) – very ancient origins and similarity with the Orphic-Pythagorean culture that spreaded through the entire Magna Grecia area, and particularly the city-symbol of this culture, Taranto, that in fact gives its name to Tarantism and to the Tarantella itself.
Pitagora philosopher, therapeutist, mathematic and astronomer, maintained that the entire creation was based on armonic proportion and that the way of knowledge and wisdom for humans went through the consciousness of those proportions.
To be at unison with universe with the armony of spheres.
Music was the main method in order to activate this self-consciousness and to obtain mind progress in humans. Thanks to music and all its components (rhythm, melos, dance, etc.) humans could reach the ecstatic condition that allowed them to vibrate at unison with gods.
Religious cults of the most ancient mythological gods,
Apollo, Demetra, Dionisio, Eros, Pan, etc., always contained various musical performances.
Gods themselves are often represented in ecstatic poses bringing musical instruments… for example Apollo holding the cetra, Demetra with the frame-drum, Pan with the panflute and Dionisio with the aulos.
The equation ecstasy-comfort is a foundament of theory-practice of Psychosomatic and Umanist Ontosophia.
The main dynamic that brings to the healing of the so-called “tarantulated” has to be found exactly in the reaching of ecstasy thank to sounds and rhythm made by musician conscious of doing this therapeutic practice.
We could in fact see a healthy-intuitive-primitive concept of intentionality as dynamic motivation of Psyche (individual and collective) in Love (eros) with the Living-Nature.
In the purpose of enforcing and proving in a scientific method these origins of Tarantism – not recognized by everyone – I started to visit museums and archaeological spots in order to research and collect images from the past which could prove this historical relation.
The results of this research, which is still being done, are amazing and the material collected till now – about one hundred diapositives – is exemplifying and corroborant the ontosophic idea of Eros and Psyche as engine of roots of western culture (and from this, of any authentically human culture).
Paradoxically these origins of Tarantism haven’t been thought of and recognized by many of those who studied the phenomenon, which so has been dated to medieval age, and even De Martino agrees to this thesis, despite the fact he has found some similarities with some rituals of the ancient Greece (oistros and aioresis) and an analogy so described “…about the musical cathartic we must remember how the pythagorean tradition of correspondence between musical harmony of cosmos, the musical harmony of soul and body and the music obtained with human instruments went in medieval age through De Musica of Boezio…” cause he hadn’t found literal testimonies regarding Tarantism dated before the 1000 a.d. (the most ancient document related to musical exorcism of those poisoned by tarantula’s bite is the papal Sertum De venenis) .
If De Martino had examined the collection of archaeological items of apulia’s pots of Iatta of Ruvo in Puglia, surely he would have found in the images what he hadn’t found in written text.
The research I’ve done with the ermeneutic perspective originated by humanistic and music-theraupeutic studies has leaded myself to research in the images, coming from the ancient past, those proves that could testify the hypothized origins of Tarantism.
It’s amazing in fact the big quantity of ritual and mythological scenes related to music and expecially to Eros and Dionisio’s myths represented on vascular exhibits found in Taranto and in numerous necropolis of the ancient Messaphic and Peucete cities such as Rudie, Roca, Egnatia, Mesagne Conversano, Bitonto, Altamura, Ruvo, and dated back mainly to the IV century b.C. , a period in which the Pytagorean Taranto of Archita made many commerce trades and cultural exchanges with the local populations.
The high number of ancient pottery laboratories, found in the archaeological spots, testifies that those pots was locally produced and that the choice of representing those myths wasn’t a case but it pointed customs and believings of the society of that period.
Malinowski’s theory affirms that myth and rituality related to that, represent a sort of “license” of social institutions that legitimates customs and believings of an entire society.
The relation is completed by the visualization of diapositives representing the above-mentioned images.
Rocco A. Stano

The psychotherapeutic work needs coherence between research and facts, scientific autonomy and wellbeing realized, art and life.

According to this coherence, we want to make evident how many great men have had some psychosomatic problems and difficulties in family relations, with consequences instilled in their so called “creative” production.

Many untouchable great men are also the fruit of an untouchable alienation of the system. A well protected sistemic schizophrenia also runs or has run inside them. My purpose is not to attack great men’s ingenious contribution to human progess, but to eliminate an alienation they didn’t consider and which is passed an to mankind, beyond their life, not seen and hidden, sometimes, by their own ingenial work.

In my opinion, only a philosophy meaning love of real wisdom and an authentic practice in restoring the psychosomatic wellbeing can permit us to enjoy what we earn, our children, nature, scientific discoveries, the pleasure of living….

Someone may think it is disgraceful, if the myth of the great genius is dealt with scientific analysis, but it is certain that the human being’s conscience that constantly develops in one’s own well-being light, desires the “essential” from every historical individuation. The word “essential” means, from a scientific point of view, the exact contribution to human progress, to the psychic, psychosomatic and concrete well-being: something that extends beyond the limits of knowledge until a hypothetical1 and real coinnection with the intelligent being.

Resolving the historical impasse in human progress derived from fixations in thought and acts of the geniuses, indicates the possibility to obtain a new development of the meaning of creativity. What we, generation or intelligence of the future, would like to know is: will the “idea-action” of a creative man produce well-being or malaise with the passing of time? And more: when or how much malaise and when and how much wellbeing?

Every “idea-action” that is considered creative should be studied according to a “cost and benefit” standard, beginning from the author’s first steps, releasing it from the depth of the non-existence or the noumenal reality where it is only a seed or possibility.

If music, art and philosophy of some men determined a decline and aberration in the sociopsychologic and physical field, why should we continue to consider them “creative”? Well, maybe as in a consequence of a sociocultural stereotype, we are more attracted by all those famous, important people, well known individuals than the anonymous small-great individuals. And how many of these anonymous or minor figures, really, contribute to support or destroy genius? For both of their health, isn’t it better to distance from those easy advertising media fixations? Some ask themselves, if what we call progress is real. This is a question that we all should ask ourselves, without assuming a drastic position.

For example, has discovery of the atomic energy, in this sense, been paid too dear or not? Who could have forseen the price to be paid for this discovery? And are we supposed to count it among the creative “idea-actions” or not? With sorrow, a great physicist told me that all the modern physics wad done was to create the destructive power of the atomic bomb.

Moreover, is the idea of producing something at all costs, an idea as old as the world, a creative “idea-action” or not? Doesn’t the overpopulation in some earth environments produce more problems, malaises, than a good education to the project of intelligence which grows?

Gardner reports this statement of the immunologist and Nobel prize winner Peter Medawer: “That creativity is beyond every analysis, it is a romantic illusion from which we have to free ourselves”.2 But to me it seems that he doesn’t catch the meaning and importance of some relationships between psychosomatic malaise (emotional frustration, obsession, etc.) and the damage that the image imposed by the genius in the socioculture has determined in terms of the impasse of intelligence in the wellbeing and authentic progress of humanity. Hillman is clearer when he says: “We need the biographies of the great men to understand ourselves and others”3. But today many people still have deep childish respect for the genius and masters. They are not able to see the hidden pathology or they don’t have the courage to see the damage and price paid by humanity and also by the genius himself, as an individual, in developing and perpetuating a science or art program that often, after many years, reveals itself against-life or manipulated by a process of rationality already schizophrenic at its outset.

According to our hypothesis, this can be read in the biography of thought and in the psychosomatic life of many great men, confused with the positivity of his ideas-actions.

In the Academies of Art or Science no one asks themselves anymore what their aims are, what happens and what are the effects of some ideas, inventions in the users psychosoma.

Stendhal’s Syndrome4, for example, can exemplify the meaning of a negative dynamic, that begins with a work of art and destructively instills itself in the user-consumer. Without exaggerating, iconoclasm could positively mean the need to free oneself from the images in order to grow up and give birth maieutically to one’s own Real Ontic Ego, contrary to a system that virtualizes the human ego, instilling malaise and alienation in the psychosoma. If we understand this fact, we can choose pictures to hang up in our house, avoiding, first of all, the products of the insane. This, however, doesn’t mean that the sense of art of the true human beng is reduced.

The devil and schizophrenia can be the same thing: a reductive projection of the human being made by an intelligence that alienates the natural psychosoma and hides itself very well in the human millenary civilization.

It is well known that Picasso refused to talk about death and recognize other people’s death, even though many tragic events happened around him.

“Picasso identified himself more and more with the Minotaur, and he wanted women to sacrifice body and soul for him.

His first wife, Olga, went mad and died in 1955; the most carefree of his lovers, Marie Therese Walter, hung herself in 1977; the most intellectual, Dora Marr, suffered from a nervous breakdown. His nephew committed suicide by drinking bleach when he was forbidden to attend Picasso’s funeral; his second wife Jacqueline, whom he had married in 1961, shot herself the night after she had exhibited her personal collection of Picasso’s artistic works.

Mary Gedo said Picasso was “crazy about tragedy” and she says that he was particulary attracted by frail women and that he never left them until their lives ended in a tragic way.

It is unthinkable that he could be innocent (…..) Picasso also made his male friends suffer very much.”5

Is it possible that Picasso’s pictures produce a psychosomatic destructivity? One thing is sure, that the images immediately transmit positiveness and/or negativeness. In what part of the human psychosomatics do Picasso’s pictures strike with their destructivity? How many generations will be influenced again by that deadly intentionality sedimented in colours and images?

If we consider Picasso’s statement: “Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up”6, it seems to highlight a projection of himself: his child being knows the meaning and authenticity of art as a guide for the human soul. The problem is that such a quote has been raised by the dark in which Picasso has compressed his authentic being. If we consider the events surrounding him, it could be considered the last call of his creative child being. The fact is that also his life and work, both demonstrate evidence of his pathology.

It is difficult to criticize such a great artist as Picasso, who is considered a great creative genius, but it is correct however, that each of us begins to ask ourselves (and as yet there is no appropriate research available on this subject) if creativity is not even a paradigm that is wanted by the marketing system present either in the physical or artistic field. It is a question of doing research on what is the real creativity, what are the ways that produce it and what is the criteria that will discriminate between those images that produce creativity and those that produce destructiveness, psychosomatic, relational malaise, schizophrenia, aggressiveness, murder, drugs and cancer ……

Not having the courage or intelligence to criticize the great master, it could mean that one could be absorbed by a system of schizophrenic and antihistorical intelligence that does not want real authentic human progress from the present to the future. One must have the courage to spak out and not to remain in silence7.

I master, I psychotherapist, when I meet a client, a child, a friend, I must wonder: do we get on well together? Do we produce our psychic, physic good or do we get angry, do we hit out? Have we a head-ache? Do we suffer from stress? Owing to this psycho-organismic criteria, after we can speak about love, soul, good, art, wisdom, about everything.

When one sees things that contrast with the eternal living being, it is important that he who sees and knows, even if he is the only one, such as a scientist, wise man or visionary, he must declare that he had noticed it, so he can avoid falling from his own vision-act and that the authentic future intelligences fall with him.

It is certain that the genius (like every man) elaborates the culture of the age in which he lives and contributes to his creative development, in so far as the social-environment, as ontic-exsistential conscience, allows. All this is mediated in the body-psyche sphere of the ingenious individual, it becomes part of his chemical and psychic metabolism and consequently he expresses what he lives in his psychosoma.

Etymologically “genious” comes from the Latin “genere-gignere” (to generate – to procreate) and it implies, a spiritual aspect, therefore psychic, of the human being. If for example, we consider the expression “genius loci”, that is to say the intelligence the guardian spirit that lives in a place, we mean a psychodynamics of wisdom and knowledge of the real that incarnates in a preferential individual with ontopsychosociogenetic attitude and realizes the progress of the humanity which is living there. Many times instead, a dream that one of my clients had can come true for many individuals. In the dream he lived in the year 5000 and he had two brains, one computerized and the other one natural. In this way, the system controlled mankind, determining energetic, socio-economic and psychosomatic (disease and partial health) decompensations.

Some clients, for example, come to psychotherapy with an evident degree of psyche-soma split (they don’t know how to recognize their proprioceptive sensations or they are afraid of them) exactly as if they were two people in one, two bodies in only one! This makes us think of a virtual, extraneous corporeity, in the manner of Sartre’s speaking8. Already there are artists and people who live, trying to propagandize the cyborg, that is the man half flesh and half machine, therefore this dream is probable.

The dream of another client confirms this aspect. The person dreams that she has two stomachs, a maternal and a paternal one, next to her body, near her stomach. When one of them moves in her body, she begins to feel unwell and queasy. The person is aware that in her, on one side exists a visceral intelligence, on the other a virtual reality that acts inside as well as outside. The wiseness of the dreamlike intelligence9 can diagnose this. The fact that there were two stomachs, one paternal and other maternal, makes one think in freudian terms that a Super-Ego both paternal and maternal, interfere with the visceral soul. I do not believe that this is an adequate explanation. I think that there is something more concrete happening.

The dream represents the event of a hologrammatic synchronicity mediated by super-luminal energies in a harmonic-universal sphere of action. I say this because the experimental evidence of Dement C.10 who proved that the deprivation of the REM phase made the cavies die in laboratory and strongly troubled the personalities in human subjects to the point that the interruption of the experiments was decided.

So the dream, even in its imaginative appearance of futility or not real sense is a synthesis of photonic and also superluminal energy as some experiences of phenomenological synchronicity demonstrate, among them, the most relevant is that experienced by the same Jung himself about one of his patient’s suicide. Jung dreamed that the patient went to see him and this was accompanied by a loud bang.11

The dream can be the condensation of different forms of intentional projection from the universe of the spheres of action. In my experience I distinguish three forms of projections: 1) that one coming from a sistemic virtualizing alienation; 2) the one redundant and reflective, multiplied by a sistem of virtual reality overfilled or seized up or in energetic black out for lack of semantic significance in the living terminals; 3) the creating or demiurgic projection from the ontic-existential human reality (ontic ego) in the act of coming back or creating the psychosomatic sense (engastrimytoi, daimon, soul). Each of these projections is recognizable by the peculiar way of contact-frequence-interference in the proprioceptors of the whole organismic.

Rarely we have an awareness of our viscerality, usually we are only aware of the cerebral centre in the frontal zone, which is the part we use for our banal daily activity and exchanges, and according to the neurophysiologists is enough for all daily actions that we need to carry out. We however do not have awareness of all the visceral soul, this is not only regarding the stomach but all that vibrates in, as conscience and psychic intentionality inside the organs (the viscera are more extensive than the brain matter). Usually the majority of people delegate to the brain the function of conscience, value, and instances of greater intelligence; instead, we are now aware that the body, in a positive or negative aspect, many times demonstrates the existence of its own intelligence (other than celebral) that operates also during the conscious life.

Therefore our paradigms must be eliminated if they interfere in our psychosomatic life, in our love-soul being, in conjunction with our eco-system.The virtual reality is an example of the schizophrenogenous alienation in the psychosomatic corporeity and it means an interference by telehologramatic induction, acting through unities of telematic frequences with a technological solution. The virtual system, through the medical or psychologic mechanism, formalizes a hologram of the organ and transfers it into the human’s own body. This system of schizophrenia in the body has been built during the centuries by and in mankind and simply aims to make the body mechanical and to dispossess the individual himself of his own capability of being “entelechy” soul-body.

The word “entelechy”, so significant with this subject, has been substituted by the term “psychosomatic”, which in turn has been substituted in DSM-IV12, from a “somatic” word, as if we need to go out of the sense of soul-body, as if we need to go towards the physical field. These are very important courses in order to demonstrate how in human civilization a mechanical intelligence exists, that can take effect against, and tends to bring out the sense, beginning with words. Words, like images, that take the sense and the non sense; it could be that a meaning is not given to a dream or that a film is not criticized from a psychical or psychosomatic point of view. A statistical method of investigation on which we can base this, still does not exist. And usually we don’t ask spectators: “Did you feel well or not whilst you were watching television?” or “How is your stomach, your heart, your head after watching that film?”. In general, we speak only about things such as “What did you think of that actor? of the film script, of the colours?” We never ask “your soul, your body, how are they? Your psyche-body, how is it?” Behind every film there is a projective philosophy; of consequence, what arrives to the public is the result of positive or negative intentionalities through it. Only someone knows the effects and have been studing them, and there are only a few experts at an international level (for example Bandura), they can do something in terms of redefining the vital conscience.

If we remember Heisemberg who said that in the fantasy and images there is the ulterior progress of the physics, we can better understand the importance of the autogenous, autopoietic work (I could refer to Maturana) of the images; we can understand better the importance that each of us refinds by himself his own im-ago.13

The word “sophia” had an analogous destiny as did the word “psychosomatic”. In the philosophical dictionary14 about the word “wiseness” an interpretation only in a christian-catholic sense is given. “Wiseness”, as a word, did not evolve from the old testament but from the ancient indo-euopean language and probably from well before. It really evolved from human nature on earth. Not from the bible or the pitagorical school derives I know who I am, because this awareness is born from the fact of I who is born, from my wellbeing, from my well that is doing, from being I, good and fertile now. It doesn’t derive from a book, for as much as it is sacred. If we consider the hypothesis of who had been the first to write about wiseness, we can move in to the night of the times. We do not need to ask who was the first to write it. Why propagandize, therefore, only one version and not the importance of the fact that the criterion of the truth, of the wiseness, of the reason is referred to a here-now act of psychosomatic wellbeing.

The psyche-soma disconnection is carried out by systematic conditionings during the years (the first 20)15 in which the human individuation is subjected to adult dependence, already disconnected in one’s own body. This doesn’t mean that the institutions are negative for the ontic-existential individuation, but that it needs an essential freedom to give its best to the social being. In this sense, in the institutions there is no practice of the humble listening of Man’s Ontic Inner life.

When “Dante Luce Interiore”(“Who gives inward light”-Socrates daimon) has been replaced by an entity that doesn’t belong to the proprioceptive identity of the human subject, then the schizophrenia of the master’s images is prevailed. This has emptied the sense of the ontic proprioceptive reality and, in the name of a God out Man, has prostrated the human being to a virtual hologram (alienating) of the soul. No god external to me! This should be the humble commandment of everyone who looks for the truth of ones own Master Light as God living in himself. On the other hand, who ever saw or met God? Who has the courage to be god for others?

“It is very difficult to explain this religious-cosmic sentiment to someone is deprived of it. It has marked the religious spirits of all ages; it doesn’t know either a God like man or dogmas, and churches cannot found their doctrines on it. In my opinion, the main function of art and science is to awake this sentiment and to keep it alive in those who know how to receive it”.16

All humanity is still a child inside or maybe has a great deal of its own Being remained child. A child that was hurt in his soul and that wasn’t able to rebel or shout: “That’s enough!”, or if he did it, he wasn’t understood; and it is very strange how this anger becomes revenge or distortion in human civilization, through the great geniuses, who wrecked the common horizons of the standard intelligence with their deflagrating creativity. Jesus died because he had to clean the sins of humanity but they didn’t finish; it didn’t work, and the humanity of that age, killing God’s son, had deprived itself of many years of Ontic value teaching. This happened also with Socrates, Pythagoras and many others intelligences, masters of mankind; why didn’t these intelligences want to escape death or malaise?

Buddha suffered to consent the lighting of conscience and to eliminate pain, but the Karma of humanity is still strong today. Two thousand years of religion didn’t help to eliminate this malaise from the soul or from the body; and I don’t believe anymore that this malaise is part of God’s game, because I consider God, any god, an intelligence who doesn’t want or doesn’t create malaise. It is incredible how the mistakes of some choices of the so called human progress, are understood after the disasters that it produced and still produces. But it is difficult to distinguish if the proliferation of human lives, who do not have either food or benefit, is evil as much as a war or a nuclear disaster. One thing is certain: both some choices of nuclear physics and the ideas of a sectarian and homicidal religion are always the results of theories, circuits, and dogmas, that are triggered by few elements and decide the fate of the entire human race. Certainly, the person who discovered nuclear energy couldn’t imagine that it would have killed a lot of people; in that period, physicists did not believe in fantasy and could not see beyond the thickness of substance17.

All theoretic systems must be abandoned in order to permit the experience of the psychic-act, that is to abandon everything that is alienated and to open the reality of the individual soul in the universal being in order to perceive the physics of the true psychics in the human thought.

In the true psychotherapeutic relationship, this interiority is first of all a reciprocal psychosomatic sophos and not only brain logic: the therapist and his client must work together to realize constantly this aim, that isn’t only an instinct of pleasure but also existential must being, therefore an ethic function for humanity.

About the intentional difference between Logos and Sophos, a lot may be said beginning from the religious or laical ideologies that from time to time elected in history the Logos as first principle and relegated the Sophos to a rational surface, but in reality the wisdom of the Being was born before its word and however it guides the action towards the aim.

“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God”18. This could be a way of saying of a religious school and not the act vision of the real Being that does not consider words as terms of reality but it accomplishes the wellbeing in the wisdom of self-consciousness (SOPHOS).

Deepening epistemologically the aspect, we can begin to verify that the term sophos, as a psychic energy, intentionality of the living being is born in the culture and history before Logos, and it has more significance and is more radically cosmic; nevertheless it has been removed and deprived of its vital sense. It was instead the “logia” (and almost certainly not the “logos”) to evolve and have relevant importance in the culture, science so as in the therapeutic relationships and not.

Remaining in a clinical circle, if we really want to do something for mankind, we must first observe the scientific law of “it has happened to me or it happens to me”; to be precise, I refer to the subjective transcendental phenomenology intuited, but certainly not experienced by Husserl in a clinical psychosomatic context. To have the courage to express one’s own faculties or experienced universes, to escape the prejudicial occultism that is projected onto us by those kind of scientists that see the methodology of scientific research as an exclusive mechanism, superior to the natural principles of man, it is only possible with a scientific mind trained to catch the various intentional changes of the psychic sphere in the body.

The evolutive principle of human intelligence imposes upon us a methodology that is “the way beyond” (metà odòs, gr. meta odoV), an overcoming of what is already acquired in order to obtain a maieutic real sense of the human being. We must find again, the authentic etymon of method like the way beyond the knowledge that has already been acquired inside ourselves as knowing subjects. While during the normal acceptation the word method is dated back to the word “metá odós”, from the Greek (meta odoV) where metá means through or by, therefore the way by which, we propose that metá means beyond; so method is beyond the way, that is already marked and paradigmatic. The difference is slight but still noticeable because in the spoken word the way beyond the already acquired knowledge we don’t approve very much the norms of the objective method, but it opens up a concrete possibility of experience, intuition and subjective contribution beyond the phenomenological fact of a reductionism or systemic banalization of the subjectivity in searching.19.

The wisdom of psychosomatic wellbeing always was and is a coincidental act with the harmony of the living universe. Protagora’s statement “Man is the measure of all things” can’t be applied as a constant referring, for example, neither to planet earth as a sphere act of life’s psychic action and nor to the unknown substance identified around the galaxy M31. But, it always existed, the awareness that the being in itself is a state of self-knowledge, or of sophia (wisdom). Hence the need to develop the intuition of Ontosophia through the philosophical methods of Bergson and Blondel (intuitionism and nativism), corroborated by Husserl’s phenomenological method and by the ontosophic maieutic approach to the psychosomatic reality of the living being. So, in my opinion the harmony between microcosm and macrocosm is recreated. It is no coincidence that Einstein proposes a model of universe “with a finite volume, but without having finite limits; as if the space was the analogous tridimensional of the bidimensional surface of a sphere with a definite area, without that this area had limits that is edges”20. And at the same time the great physicist admits that our mind is not able to understand the harmony of the universe, even if we try to formulate it with our laws of nature.21

All the great men looked for the last or fundamental science (the multiscience, as they said, that Pythagoras possessed), that I mean, as a universal methodology of the human mind usable by science, art and by the knowing: this is the Ontosophic Maieutic, namely the Art of Being, of becoming wisdom in Life.

I believe in the Being from where I see the Being, from where I live the Being. The age of blind faith without the deep ecstatic22 personal experience of the divine has finished and must finish for many others if we want to find the humanity of the ontic intelligence again.

The important thing is to realize a peace-strength, that is a research of the healthy man and ethical conscience of the therapist, conscious of his own problems and capability to resolve them, above all psychosomatic problems, since these are the ones that elect the appropriate therapy, its value and of this or that school.

In order to obtain the sense of science and therapy we don’t need studies and verbose observations, publications, conferences, to know in laboratory the substances, the ways producing dreams, learning, memory,etc. We need a good method producing the finding again (and not only the search) of the truth. A method that is unconventional, exact, ductile, creative instrument for knowing the world beyond the paradigmatic, hologramatic one which we have already known, photographed, recorded, computerized, bombarded. And it stayed scoffing to hide from us the true world of superluminal energies of local and universal realities. And overall, besides the good method, we need the “methodologist” that is, a person who uses the method with the open vision of “all is still possible in this world”.

The true scientists have to distance themselves from those who, while researching, thinks that “all is already said, there is nothing new under the sun”, because he, in front of the superluminal energy, will behave like a blind man and will claim to forge other blinds in order to support the status quo of a demented universe hologrammed in incessant paradigms.

The today scientific method has made the finding of the truth a spiritual abortion, determined the objectiveness in the fear of an unnatural subject knowing: how honest was Parmenides when he said that only the true method leads to the truth and so to the unveiling of the head by the solar girls and so to knowledge of the aeon. In the therapeutic sciences this is absolutely true and cannot be omitted: the true methodologist (the therapist) doesn’t survive himself if he is not total. If you see the life of all theorists in the field of therapy, you will have the evidence: few of them have survived applying to themselves their own theory. We hurriedly have to learn their psychobiography because the hologrammation of “all is already said” quickly urges, in order to smooth over the differential intuitions from the noumenal world of the possible energies.

On the other side, after observing and recording everything, we could doubt about our work if we don’t train the methodologist that is the one who will be able to apply the recovered wisdom of therapeutic wellbeing and so to be an exact tool of knowledge and reached truth: vital coincidence of the ontic intelligent continuum, method and aeon (way for the truth and continuity of being sophos, logos, psychosomatic agathoi – compare with Parmenides and Socrates).

The criteria of psychosomatic wellbeing visibly obvious to understand the homeostatic criteria of wellbeing of the earthly echosystem; why does at one point a cyclone, an earthquarke or a hole in the ozone layer occur? Why does society die? Why is it that the incidence of murder is highest in Swedish, German and Argentine societies? The macroscopic phenomenon of society and of the eco-system could explain themselves, only if we have psychosomatic criteria clear.

To demonstrate this, I bring as an example a great author: Sigmund Freud.

In the article on the journal “Dreaming”, the author argues a neurochimical etiology of Freud’s “Irma Dream” when he says: “I would be curious to see if the adding of propionic acid and a component with a propil rest [as suggested in the Irma dream] would have an effect”23.

To affirm: “Possible mechanism for tumor carcinogenesis from DMNA (Dimetylnitrosamine) contained in the smoke of tobacco” means, once again, to credit the physical mechanism without giving a scientific dignity to the psychic energy. Supposing that there has been a chemical cause about Freud’s cancer, we must recognize to the human psyche a superior scientific ability of monitoring than the echography and tomography, since the diagnosis of the carcinoma happens immediately in that dream and the malaise that would have happened soon afterwards, is foreseen. In the article, one can recognize the precognitive event of Freud’s “Irma dream” but it is correlated to a chemical cause. How many smokers don’t get cancer, and how many others choose more or less unconsciously smoke to kill themselves?24 The cause of the cancer is psychic then it is catalyzed in biochimical phenomenology: because the psyche foresees the symptom, it is clear that the tumor is a jam first psychic and then somatic. Now, apart from this, let’s take a quantity of dimethylnitrosamine DMNA and let’s put it on a pillow: let’s see if it will make us have a dream just like “Irma dream”!

All the illnesses have a psychic cause and component, even if we lost the vision consciousness. Well, here the demonstration, the evidence from the father of Psychoanalys or from the simple unconscious that seems to say: “If you don’t believe in the psychic event as aetiology of the somatic, analize my `Irma dream'”.

In the dream, Irma, the patient, symbolizes Freud’s soul. In his oneiric state he sees, in the client’s mouth, white plaques and grey scabs next to other strange forms that seem to be a nasal cavity. These plaques make us clearly think about leukoplakia areas, namely areas of morphologic and functional changes in the cells covering the oral mucosa that forms a precancerous state. Freud also defined and considered this formation leukoplakia and attributed it to an epithelioma; the whole story began here, Freud’s affliction began in 1923 and ended in 1939, when he died; he underwent 33 or 34 operations in 16 years.

This reveals that Freud’s psychosomatic ontic Ego, unconscious to himself, was conscious of the danger but rationalizes it on the contrary, as an ethical-professional fear or however something outside his psychosomatic. Infact, Freud interrupted the sittings with Irma since he could not tolerate the transferential upset. And here begins the removal of the psychosomatic sense in Freudian psychoanalysis and in the following international psychotherapeutic psychology (both in the diagnostic dream than in the conscious setting).

The ancient diagnostic meaning that all the Greek and Magnogreek (Pitagoras, Alcmeone, Hippocrates, Aristotele) wisdom attribute to dreams, is repressed in Freud’s “Interpretation of dreams”; all the delphic, orphic and asclepic tradition has been walled by non sense.

This is paradoxically weighty if we consider the aim of Psychoanalysis that is to let the Es coincide with the Ego. Probably Freud, heir of an hermeneutic not psychosomatic tradition censored the Greek and Magnogreek wisdom about dream and therapy, as it has been done for two thousand years.25 This Freudian censorship introduced a symbolic apocriphal code in the psychological culture: something that damaged and still damages the real psychic sense of diagnostic tests applied to the therapeutic and also common relationships, because the spread of the psychoanalitic movement. If we think the repression begun during the Roman Empire and with Catholic church, we could consider psychoanalysis only the last ideology repressing the agathoi-psychosoma and its sophrosyne (wisdom).

The fear of ethic-professional implication in the transfert indicates a level of immaturity in the individual in managing the millenary triggers, that are what the system instills about ethics, professionalism, love, sexuality and eros. In psychotherapy love is when a person is well; in our school the discussion of transfert (if the patient should fall in love in psychotherapy and see the psychotherapist as a mother/father figure) is totally dismissed giving back all sense of here-now of the psychosomatic wellbeing; all the rest are of little use, unrealities, less than science-fiction, it is dust! It seems that the only purpose of psychoanalysis is and has been to (free) redeem the principle and pychoanalytic theory from pre scientific projections through the long training, the ritual of little couch, of dreams and associations, things that up to a certain point have permitted a knowledge of the unconsciousness, after a certain period they have snared the psychic knowledge.

It would have been enough that Freud had met Groddeck, who had realized the sense of the psychosomatic, we would have had today, a little more knowledge. His essential and valid intuition can found the wiseness of the psychosomatic being in the human individual.

At a certain point in his career, Freud occupied himself only with the confirmation of a theory that had not a corresponding restoring praxis in the clinical situation. After Freud, psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, were developed in many schools, but we must arrive at Milton Erickson to relocate psychosomatics but applied to hypnosis, that is the discipline that Freud had left out because it excluded the conscience.

The same things had happened with Einstein for cosmology. First the introduction, the sickness and then the denial.

A certain number of years had to pass before the physics scholar S. Hawking (who was by strange coincidence, due to a severe illness, confined to a wheelchair) with the theory of black holes, revolutionized physics starting with a cosmological idea; the same one with which Einstein was blocked.

If we look at this in the confirming light of Thomas Kuhn, we will understand better society’s basic belief system, the generally accepted categories that define what counts as “truth” and what constitutes “reality”, and how they have influenced for centuries the research and evolution of science and the multiversal sense of reality.

Here, I insert the possibility that the sphere of action of the Psychosomatic Ontosophy that takes again the ancient astrophysical concept of the harmony of the spheres from Magno Greek philosophy can rebuild the modern sense of the Micro-Macrocosmic Harmony between individual being and universal being because it represents the real vision through which I move within the therapy circle. It is inspiration of the therapeutic relation in which, in order to heal the entrance symptom a movement of atoms, proceeding between the two psychic corporeities of therapist and client, happens.

Sph A = E . I= P H26 . This formula works with my clients in therapy and, because the psychic and psychosomatic symptom is blocked energy, it has a physical importance, it is pertinent to physics.

So the above mentioned formula can have corollaries for the physics as it happened about the synchronicity of Jung. If you consider the modern physicists that talk about obscure substances that keep together the Andromeda galaxy, they are researching these spheres of invisible material that are present in the universe and that there are many spherical formations in the physical, biologic and chemical microcosm. Are they the same spheres of which Pythagoras is said to listen to music?

Let’s go over some events in the life of Einstein. He also experienced family problems. As for Freud (that had known Groddeck and Jung) had sense his illness by dismissing his psychosomatic sense (taken by the next psychotherapy schools) so for Einstein had importance the crisis of his family in relation with the elaboration of his thought and the condition of his health.

In 1917 Einstein introduces the cosmology again in the physics discussion, then he falls ill with liver problems, an ulcer and jaundice: is it possible that in his psychosomatic he suffered a psychic pressure by a paradigmatic system about the physic reality? It is plausible to think that this system doesn’t like to be upset by cosmology (found again in the ancient pythagorean philosophy)27 as a science guiding the speculation of modern physics? And why? Didn’t Einstein also give up the speculation about ether in physics?

If we refer to the 600 Copernican tolemaic disputation (you can think of Galileo’s vicissitude) and to the revival of the ancient natural Pythagorean ideas of the Earth that goes round the sun, it is possible to hypothesize that the actual contrast of the paradigmatic system of the science towards the cosmological speculation of the psychics means an unwilling return to the real ideas of physics, those, normally, intuited by the Greek and Magna Greek philosophers. For example it is possible that the Pythagorean idea of harmony of the spheres is a physical reality, an explanatory sketch of unresolved questions about the microphysic structure of nature, the relations between this and the psychic intentionality of the living being? Is it an explanation about synchronicity of microcosm and macrocosm? Could Bell’s theory and Einstein Podoslsky Rosen paradox be phenomenologies of an ethic sphere that tends to harmony as an organism tends to homeostasis?

On the other side we don’t understand why nowadays physics and psychics are so far, divided and not integrated as in the one flowering of Art and Science during the magno greek period (VI c. B.C.) with the Pythagorean school. It is emblematic, for example, that Pauli and Jung, after their meeting, didn’t join physics and psychics how it is in the natural order of events. Actually, Pauli discovered the principle of symmetry (dynamic) from the pythagorean Policleto (author of canon) and Jung almost reluctantly admits the relation of synchronicity with Archè number.All this without either of them citing the pythagoreans of whom another example of psychophysic prevision from the distant sixth century B.C. (2500 years ago) is shown.

I acknowledge that these are imaginary philosophic questions, but open hypothesis are never sufficient if we are on the way of wledge. Other times I lingered over the possibility that the human faculty of prevision in a psychophilosophic and scientific sense could guide through sensitive minds, towards progress. This happened, for example for the atom of Democritus, regarding the theory of floating continents (see Talete), the sun’s centrality in the planetary system (see the Pythagoreans) and recently Gabor’s theory about holograms that arrived twenty years earlier on the constructions of instruments that produced them.

In 1914 Einstein divorced his wife and the first World War broke out. Is there a connection between the relational malaise of Einstein’s family with world conflict? And why did his son Tedel die of schizophrenia in a psychiatric hospital, the Burgholzli (where both Jung and Binswanger worked, and meditated about the collective unconscious and about dasein analysis)? Why does a son become schizophrenic in the family of a genius such as Einstein? How is it possible that a genius like Einstein who had discovered an unsettling formulae, has faced two unsettling events in his life, the war and those personal events (such as a marriage crisis and the mental health of his son)?

On the 11th November 1940 Einstein wrote a letter to M. Basso: “It is a thousand times a pity that the boy has to spend his own life without hoping in a normal life. Since the injection of insulin had no effect, from a medical point of view, I don’t have other hopes. All things considered, I think it is better that nature runs its course”. The absurdity is that an intelligence such as Einstein hasn’t considered the possibility that Nature can do better then insulin (insulinic shock) of psychiatrists, and yet he was in contact with Freud. We can understand that psychoanalysis didn’t inspire confidence in the physicist but the psyche as energetic act of the human thought couldn’t be unknown to him (also because of the significance of his oneiric intelligence in the solution of some formulas). But which was the situation of the individual Einstein as psychosomatic being in that period?28

He was devoting his energy both to the spreading of the relativity theory and the study of Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox (1935) and moreover he had to think about his exodus from Europe and to the family labour with wife and children.

In the meantime, in those years psychotherapy was becoming independent from psychoanalysis (1943) and music therapy started to get relevant results in some experimentations in the American universities.

But Psychotherapy and Music Therapy were too far from the crushing matters of war events, among them Einstein’s signature on the letter to Roosvelt (August 1930) that fixed the allocation of funds for building the 1st atomic bomb. Later Einstein changed his mind and said that if he had been sure that the Germans were not able to build the bomb, he wouldn’t have given his assent…

But “nature runs its course” as it did for the son conducted by a physical-chemical mindedness, and for Hiroshima. Two tragedies he couldn’t foresee from his “phychic universe”. On the other side we can imagine under which psychological pressure the genius Einstein could live.

Strange associations! Maybe we can consider them psychoanalytic but I consider them ontic-existential.

On the other hand the Einstein formula played a major role on the outcome of the II world war because it led tothe discovery and application of atomic energy29 (even if the staff in Los Alamos built the bomb).

To confirm what I think I would like to quote Heisemberg: “Life on earth is all one, in any given place can have effects everywhere, we are all jointly responsible for the order of life on this earth”30. This means that there is a destructive, casual intentionality denying the true civilization and another one causal, ontosophic that moves the human being towards a real, vital progress in social psychic and somatic wellbeing. And as Einstein said “God is subtle but not evil”.31

Every man is called by the wisdom of his own being to choose the alliance with the true life.

The only physical thing that is not admitted and recognized in Freud’s dream and in Einstein’s life is the “P”constant, namely Psyche which has its own sphere of action in all the psychosomatic and scientific biography of the great men and probably when it is not in inner – external harmony, provokes psychic malaises in close relations and also a wandering in their theoretic conceptions.

The mistakes of mankind are a consequence of the great men’s mistakes: man deviates from the real being, he falls into a psychic and somatic schizophrenia instead of a psychophysic ontosophy. The wandering seems less probable for physical science (it has been exposed to severe experimental rules) but it is certainly deleterius for the psychic sciences of Health and Art, that influence much more the minds for generations. Do the great men lack the experience of the living self-vision of the harmony of spheres? Could the philosophic theories (not only with Democrito’s atomic theory) be psychic intuitions of the physical reality? From which intelligence do they come if not from the psychic one?32

R. Laing said: “We are not surprised that the deepest structures of our conscience corrispond to the structures that we observe with the universe.”33 The tantric models of cosmology corrispond to the modern astrophysic ones.

What would have happened if Einstein had accepted the presidency of the Israeli State so as they offered it to him? “What will we do if he agrees? Of course I had to offer him the presidency because it was impossible to do otherwise. But if he says yes, we are in trouble “. Ben Gurion to his personal secretary Ytsak Navan, after having asked Ebba Eban to offer the Israeli presidency to Einstein in the November 1952.34

Could a more mature Einstein, in peace with his family, be decisive for politics of wellbeing in the Middle East and in the rest of the world? How could a man that let slips the management of the atomic energetic formula and also that of psychic and somatic energetics in his own family, be considered a genious?

I report a clinical example: about 2 weeks ago, a 50 year old man, came to my studio, with his wife. Several months before he had had a heart attack and even if he solved his problem with medicines and angioplasty, he was aware that following the way of the organicistic mechanism would have led him only to an operation. The psychosomatic cause of his malaise would not have been eliminated. The couple was aware of the relationship between social-family stress and the heart attack. But this was not enough because the two would face the psychosomatic treatment.

In Italian hospitals (as in many other countries) there is no consideration for psychosomatic aetiology of the malaise. One of the reasons maybe that health business is organized only on the mechanical mentality and not on psychosomatic unity of man; machine and medicines for to those who invest in them. But a contradiction emerges naturally: the organism as psychobiological intelligence is capable of healthy autogenisis, but this fact has been repressed. The physic-chemical mechanism produces a proliferation of approaches and mechanical instrumentation in order to resolve the diagnostic perception and therapeutic action without consenting to cultivate the natural auto-poiesis of the psycho-biological.35

Returning to the patient, it is clear that there are not any scientific or institutional attempts at psychosomatic rehabilitation of the apparatus in functional difficulty. Of course, this happens because the rehabilitation is not (in todays mechanical system) intended as a psychosomatic psychotherapy process. It is better to say that we do not give the individuation in malaise the dignity of having inside a wisdom of ones own psychosomatic being (Psychosomatic Ontosophy) activator of health.

In order to obtain this we need to consciously renounce every field of action, understood in a psychointentional sense, in both verbal and non verbal communication. To renounce means leaving to run through the sophos from the inside of the psychosomatic being, marvelling in the coincidence the “logos” of Ego deviated by the systemic schizophrenia36 and restoring again the individual self management of the psychosomatic wellbeing.

Einstein and Freud and also many others were controlled in their own inside by a mechanistic antipsyche system. Many human beings are controlled by holograms that pervert the sense, the autogenous strength of their psyche-soma.

I am not against medicine, surgery or atomic energy, I am against the unhealthy management of human and natural energies; I am against the methodologies and useless investments even if fashionable. I am against everything that is against the healthy life because simply I am here with all them that I love and I want to remain here, a happy man for a long time.

12) During a recent journey in USA, I discussed with some colleagues about the word “psychosomatics”: in the anglo-saxon language it is used in an acception devaluating the psychic sense, because it means a phenomenon induced into soma by a mental tendency of subject. At best (compare Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) it indicates a somatic state with psychic cause. It never indicates (but this meaning is rare, also in the italian language) the synolon body-psyche (see entelechy). Concerning this the Dizionario Enciclopedico delle Scienze Mediche quotes “Psychosomatic: related to the relation body-mind”, “Somatopsychic: related to both body and mind”. In DSM – IV the term somatoform indicates “physical symptoms that suggest a general medical condition and are not fully explained by a general medical condition, by the direct effects of a substance, or by another mental disorder (….) the physical symptoms are not intentional”.
The term “entelechy” in greek (see “Vocabolario della lingua Greca”, Loescher) means complete fulfilment (being complete in itself).
Exactly as the EPISTEMOLOGY has lost the sense of its etymological root (episteme) by which it comes, so the term somatic has lost its primary etymon of soma as instrument for harmony (compare with “I Pitagorici, Testimonianze e frammenti). Also if we want to catch again the sense of Soul-Harmony through the mediation of soma-musical instrument, as it was meant by pythagorism, we would do wrong, not only in the etymologic and krasic (unitive) sense to the most ancient and comprehensive term “psychè” that included also the term soma in its meaning of energy.
Moreover “psychè”, because derived from “pneuma”, breath or act of breathing in communion with air”, coincides with the deepest archetype sense, that is one of the archetypes (the air) that the ancient philosophers put at the base of everything. In any case considering difficulties in psychotherapeutic practice and in healing the symptom when we use intentionalities lacking in the energetic sense-principle of the same words and considering that I adopt the style of intending words from their original etymon and that it works, then it has to be held in scientific consideration. We have also to hold in serious scientific consideration who is able to intend wellbeing and so to eliminate the disease even though he uses words (somatics) not corresponding to the total etymo-epistemic sense that cures and that is the psychosoma.
I would like to know if all those that use the DSM – IV and the diagnostic cognitions there contained are able to operate healthy. But if the statistic about the increasing schizophrenia (compare with “Le Scienze”, May 1997) supported the idea that psychiatrists and therapists don’t relieve the psychic malaise and the psyche-soma split using physic-chemical paradigms, I have to remember the prevalence of the diagnostic tendency in medicine is peculiar of asclepic Hippocrates’ school and it is younger, even it has more than two thousand years, then the other orphic, alcmeonic pythagoric tendency. Here the therapeia and the ethos of healthy (as objective risult of the cure), to distinguish the true wise from the false, prevailed.
“Few people are thyrsus bearers” Plato says and thyrsus is an orphic, dionysiac typical symbol.
13) Mi riferisco al significato etimologico della parola immagine che deriva da Im-ago: im=in; ago=agisco: agisco, cioè agire dentro, azione interiore.

Following the completion of my Master’s degree in humanistic-transpersonal psychology at theUniversity of West Georgia last year, I have been working as a direct care counselor at Inner HarbourHospital in Rockmart, GA. The facility, set in 600 acres of pine forest, maintains a strong emphasis upon holistic healing by way of experiential methods. My primary group of clients consists of eight boys (ages 13-15) who are victims of sexual abuse and the majority of whom are severely cognitively challenged and/or developmentally truncated. What I would like to share with you here are some means by which I feel I have initiated a sense of collective resonance within the group by way of music and art therapy.

Music and Meditation-Mediation

As a group, the clients with which I work have struggled a great deal since their initiation into the program last summer. Among the major problems that I have encountered are (a) their avoidance of treatment issues; (b) their lack of intrinsic motivation, and difficulty in transition from one component of the day to the next; and (c) their strong limitation of communication skills and other aptitudes expected for healthy interpersonal living.

Active Listening and Building Better Communication

In my use of music thus far, I have made a strong effort to choose material that seems to invite – rather than demand – the listener to pay attention. In turn, I have consciously worked toward developing a better sense of active listening in the clients, whereby some aspect of the music may captivate and help focus their concentration. This is inspired not only by existing research on the subject of music and cognition in its various forms, but also my own experience. I feel that as this listening skill is developed by way of exposure to music, it may also help pave the way toward a better sense of active listening and participation in day-to-day interactions.

I have observed consistent positive results with my group regarding this issue. Typically, on days in which I have played music prior to school or some other activity, the clients tend to (a) sit quietly without staff prompts while the music is playing, (b) better communicate with one another in the subsequent activity, and (c) engage in conversation which seems less frivolous and more applicable to their treatment.

Music as a Means of Aiding Transition

As for my selection of music, in accordance with a notion shared among many composers and musicians that certain keys and rhythms tend to correspond with the cycles of the day as much as the moods with which they are associated, I tend to play works which seem most conducive to the periods of transition in which I present them. For instance, I typically play classical or chamber music in the morning to help focus their attention before school. Recordings of modern jazz ensembles, flamenco guitarists, Celtic dances, or African folk songs may be heard midday as a means of helping revitalize the patients when they tend to get sleepy after lunch and/or school. And chants of the East and West, Native American flutes, piano or guitar works from the Baroque era, or so-called ‘New Age’ or ‘meditation’ music are generally utilized at lights out to help lull them to sleep.

Sound Healing: Music and Active Imagination

Moreover, I believe that music may be employed as a recreational therapy technique. During the days surrounding the holidays (when there were no planned school activities and heavy rains prohibited us from going outside), I initiated a series of active imagination sessions. I played Enya’sShepherd Moons and asked the patients to draw or write what came to them. The results were quite encouraging. One client with a reputation for avoidance scribbled a three-page cathartic letter to his abusive father – which, to my knowledge, may be the most substantial written treatment work he has completed during his time in the program. Another, known for his refusal and/or inability to discuss his anger problems, drew a rather dramatic and vivid picture of his inner demon. Third, a client who had been struggling with his initiation into an intensive treatment program at the gates of puberty confronted a healthy developmental crisis in the form of the symbolic death of his childhood. And overall, the clients’ usual instigative-reactive behaviors decreased dramatically, and a genuine sense of togetherness seemed to unfold.

Music, Education, and Anger Management

In addition to providing a space for therapeutic opening within the context of a structured environment, I have had other agendas in mind. First, many of the clients’ musical knowledge tends to be limited to gangsta rap and boy bands. By playing a wide variety of music from around the world and across genres and epochs, I have intentionally helped expose them to different styles other than that typically broadcast on the bandwaves. This, I hope, may broaden not only their sense of appreciation for music beyond the popular material with which they may be typically accustomed, but also their awareness of cultural diversity.

One day I brought in an album by the Beatles (with whom several of my clients are unfamiliar, or they associate with their grandparents!). Familiar with hearing comments like “This is stupid,” I was astounded to hear the clients ask that I play a number of the songs again. (All the while, I was also using the songs as a means of purporting ethics [i.e., “We Can Work It Out”], not to mention treatment values [“Help!”]). One day during a group processing session in which I encouraged the clients to recognize other means of expressing their anger than by way of outbursts and altercations, I reminded them of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (which they had been recently expressing their appreciation for) and asked if they knew much about the people who had created it. “No,” they said. I replied, “JohnLennon was a very angry man. Angrier than you, perhaps!”

The clients appeared astonished, giving me looks as if I should be the one residing in a treatment facility. But I continued, “He had a terrible childhood. His father left when he was four, and he watched his mother fall to her death when he was barely older than you. But he did not take his upset out on others. He did not argue with his staff and his peers. He did not throw things across the room. Instead, he made beautiful art.”

Since that time, I feel that my relationship with the group has improved immensely. I like to believe that I was able to attack from within – not from the familiar staff-patient prompts, but rather from a relatedness that often only arises from a sense of shared resonance. In turn, I feel that I may have helped promote the notion that anger and suffering may be positively transformed so long as they are appropriately channeled.

Toward ReCreation Therapy

In light of these ideas and illustrations, I believe that as the patients have been played a variety of music, they seem to have become better in touch with their own inner tones and rhythms, and a genuine sense of recreation therapy in its truest sense – i.e. re-creation of the person – has ensued.Moreover, I feel that their functioning as a group has improved immensely – their sharing the common experience as victims being superceded by the common experience of being healed with the help of music, a medium with the capacity to resonate among all humans regardless of culture and time.